Some people struggle with the specific tactical task of navigating any conversational territory. I’ve certainly had a lot of experiences where people just drop the ball leaving me to repeatedly ask questions. So improving free-association skill is certainly useful for them.
Unfortunately, your problem is most likely that you’re talking to boring people (so as to avoid doing any moral value judgements I’ll make clear that I mean johnswentworth::boring people).
There are specific skills to elicit more interesting answers to questions you ask. One I’ve heard is “make a beeline for the edge of what this person has ever been asked before” which you can usually reach in 2-3 good questions. At that point they’re forced to be spontaneous, and I find that once forced, most people have the capability to be a lot more interesting than they are when pulling cached answers.
This is easiest when you can latch onto a topic you’re interested in, because then it’s easy on your part to come up with meaningful questions. If you can’t find any topics like this then re-read paragraph 2.
Some people struggle with the specific tactical task of navigating any conversational territory. I’ve certainly had a lot of experiences where people just drop the ball leaving me to repeatedly ask questions. So improving free-association skill is certainly useful for them.
Unfortunately, your problem is most likely that you’re talking to boring people (so as to avoid doing any moral value judgements I’ll make clear that I mean johnswentworth::boring people).
There are specific skills to elicit more interesting answers to questions you ask. One I’ve heard is “make a beeline for the edge of what this person has ever been asked before” which you can usually reach in 2-3 good questions. At that point they’re forced to be spontaneous, and I find that once forced, most people have the capability to be a lot more interesting than they are when pulling cached answers.
This is easiest when you can latch onto a topic you’re interested in, because then it’s easy on your part to come up with meaningful questions. If you can’t find any topics like this then re-read paragraph 2.